Link previews

The link preview feature extends the Windows 8 share experience. When a user selects the Share charm, Internet Explorer generates a link preview—a shared data object that contains enhanced information about the current webpage. In addition to the page's URL, a link preview includes the title for the webpage, a description, and a thumbnail image. To generate this link preview, Internet Explorer 10 looks for specific HTML tags. You can take advantage of this feature by including any of the supported tags in the site's HTML:

  • Title tags
  • Description tags
  • Thumbnail image tags
  • Related topics

Title tags

Title content is limited to 160 characters; longer titles are truncated in link preview.

<meta name="title" content="My Title Text" />
<title>My Title Text</title>

Description tags

Description content is limited to 160 characters; longer descriptions are truncated in link preview.

<meta name="description" content="My description text." />

Thumbnail image tags

An image URL is limited to 2048 characters.

<link rel="image_src" href="my_image_link.jpg" />
<meta name="image" content="my_image_link.jpg" />
<meta name="thumbail" content="my_image_link.jpg" />
<meta property="og:image" content="my_image_link.jpg" />

You can use any combination of these tags, but we recommend you use at least one from each category to create the best possible link preview. If there is more than one tag from the same category, the link preview uses the first one listed in the site's HTML.

Windows 8 Integration

Internet Explorer 10 Guide for Developers